Unmasking Mardi Gras Deviants

In a 2003 paper, David Redmon of Emerson College argued Mardi Gras behavior fits nicely into sociologist Erving Goffman's 1963 theory of "backspaces" — places where people can escape the glare of judgmental neighbors and bring out hidden sides of their personalities. Redmon referred to this out-of-town behavior as "playful deviance," noting it usually occurs "when small groups of tourists travel to symbolic spaces of leisure to participate in temporary forms of transgressions."

To study this phenomenon, Redmon spent a total of 500 hours at seven New Orleans Mardi Gras celebrations, attending every year from 1994 through 2000. (Academic research is rough work, but someone has to do it.) He interviewed 150 people who had participated in some form of lewd behavior along Bourbon Street — in most cases, flashing breasts or buttocks, though some went so far as to perform sex acts with strangers in full view of the crowd.

Redmon reported these situational exhibitionists felt liberated by the opportunity to anonymously defy societal norms. One woman told him: "I get to leave many parts of me back home, like the part where you have to be the wife, the mother, the good girl, the Christian lady who goes to church every Sunday." Beyond that, he discovered they loved the performance aspect of public stripping. "Revelers do not commit playful deviance in public; rather, they perform it as a fun game to attract the gaze of sightseers," he concluded.

In this era of camcorders and Internet videos, many of these impromptu "performances" are now recorded and posted online. What happens in New Orleans no longer necessarily stays in New Orleans. If Goffman's theory still holds, the possibility of being seen — and shamed — by the folks back home would presumably put a damper on such activity. But for the vacationing exhibitionists Redmon interviewed, the thrill of strutting one's stuff for the camera overrode any such concerns. "It gives me a high," one woman told him. "I feel like a star!" boasted another.

Tom Jacobs is a senior staff writer at Pacific Standard, where he specializes in social science, culture, and learning. He is a veteran journalist and former staff writer for the Los Angeles Daily News and the Santa Barbara News-Press.